Hermeneutics (Herman Who?)

Kris A. Murray

(As you read this section,
try to keep the question- “Why does the instructor think I should learn
about this?”- in mind. Also, as you read along, try to think of examples
of how you have used hermeneutics in your everyday experiences.)

While the word hermeneutics
may sound a little strange, it happens to be the term for something which
we all do every day. In fact, people who might say “Herman who?” after
hearing the word are doing it. Or if you were trying to relate the word
to something you knew or something that sounded similar, you were doing
it too. That is, you were trying to interpret the word, to understand it
in relation to something you already know. In fact, that is what the word
hermeneutics means- it is the ancient Greek word for “interpret” or “interpretive
understanding.” The most obvious example of the word interpret is what
an interpreter does when he or she translates something from one language
into another language. But, while this is a good example of interpret,
it is not the only way we use the word. We also say things like- “I interpreted
the doctor's orders differently than you,” or “I interpreted the ending
to last night’s episode of The Simpsons differently than my dad- he thought
it was sick and I thought it was funny.”

We also use the word interpret
when we talk about performances- “Mel Gibson’s interpretation of Hamlet
was better than/not as good as Richard Burton’s,” or “Eric Clapton’s acoustic
interpretation of ‘Layla’ was better than/not as good as his original version.”
In other words, we are talking about the decisions actors and musicians
make about how to perform their roles or their music. But we also interpret
their performances to ourselves- that is, we make comparisons between this
performance and other performances we have seen. We also do this with the
other arts, so interpretive thinking, or hermeneutical thinking, is very
important for us as we study the subject of this course. Although we don’t
as commonly use the word interpret when we talk of what we like or dislike
about things we experience, that is what we are doing. We are making decisions
based upon information, and that information comes from previous experiences
we have had. Therefore, we are all practicing hermeneutics all the time.
That is, we are all hermeneuts, which is the term for people who do hermeneutics.
(Sort of sounds like something off of Star Trek, doesn’t it? “Captain,
the Hermeneuts are hailing us.” “On screen, Mr. Whorf.”) But what really
makes someone a hermeneut is being aware that making comparisons is how
we think. Now this idea of making comparisons may seem pretty obvious,
but, until someone pointed it out to me, I admit I hadn’t really thought
about how I thought. But when I did, I realized that the idea made perfect
sense. However, I have also found out that, like everything else, it isn’t
quite as simple as it sounds. To know that we think by making comparisons
doesn’t necessarily help us become better hermeneuts. And it doesn’t necessarily
make us better interpreters of the arts. First, we must get a little more
familiar with hermeneutics, and acquire the tools we will need to become
better hermeneuts and to get more out of our experiences with the arts.

Origins

The word hermeneutics comes
to us from the name of the Greek god Hermes. Hermes was Zeus’ messenger,
the one he would send down to the world of humans whenever he wanted to
tell the ancient Greeks something. That is, Hermes would have to interpret
Zeus’ wishes to the humankind. As you can imagine, this wasn’t an easy
task. First, Hermes would have to be sure that he understood what Zeus’
message was, which he would do by asking Zeus questions to make sure he
understood. Then he would have to find just the right words to communicate
the message to the Greeks, that is, he would have to interpret the message
to them, so that there were no misunderstandings (if there were, Zeus could
get pretty angry). So, coming from Hermes’ name, the original use of the
word hermeneut was for someone who interpreted messages.

But the word hermeneutics wasn’t
really used as the name for a way of interpreting until many centuries
later, in the 1500’s, when what is known as the Protestant Reformation
took place. At that time, many people felt that the Church had too much
control over what people were supposed to think about the Bible. This was
because it was always written in Latin and only members of the clergy could
read Latin. But during the Reformation (1500’s), certain priests and scholars
translated the Bible into the languages of the various European nations
so that others could read it. And many people did because this was also
the time of the invention of the printing press, an event that many people
think is the second most important thing which ever happened in history.
The only event more important is the development of reading and writing
itself.

Now that the Bible was available
to everyone, arguments about what it said became common. So hermeneutics
was developed as the way to interpret the Bible. It was not meant to settle
all the arguments or to produce only one interpretation; rather, it was
developed to prevent people from saying that the Bible said this or that
based only upon personal whims or needs. In later epochs, because of the
success of hermeneutics in interpreting the Bible, it began to be applied
to the law and literature. Finally, in the 1800’s this method of interpretation
was broadened to include all of the humanities. Since then, hermeneutics
has become, for many thinkers, the cornerstone of their disciplines, which
include anthropology, psychology, the cognitive sciences, the arts, philosophy,
and even the natural sciences.

As it became more and more recognized
that the natural way of thinking is interpretive, that is, making comparisons,
hermeneutics has also come to be seen as a way of interpreting how we live
our lives. Since we “interpret” all the time, people now understand that
it just makes good sense to learn how to do it the best that we can. And
it also makes good sense for us to study hermeneutics because of the large
role it plays in our understanding of the arts.

Dialectical Hermeneutics

The style of hermeneutics which
we will be studying is known as dialectical hermeneutics and its main practitioner
is a German philosopher and teacher, Hans-Georg
Gadamer. (He uses the term dialectical, which means back and forth,
like a conversation, because he sees how we understand as being like a
conversation. But more on that later). He developed his style of hermeneutics
by studying Plato and Aristotle (some of the original hermeneuts) as well
as modern philosophers and by noticing what was the same and what was different
between the way the ancient Greeks thought and the way we think today.
He also makes connections between the way we think and the way we interact
with the arts. But in order to really understand what Gadamer discovered,
we need to understand some of his key ideas.

Hermeneutical
Circle

When we read, a very interesting
thing happens. In order to know what a sentence means, we need to know
what the individual words mean. But we can’t be sure what the individual
words mean until we know what the sentence means. This is because words
need a context in order to mean something. Words by themselves may have
definitions, but they are not meaningful until they are put together into
sentences. For example, the word line has a general definition, but think
about the different meanings the word takes on in the following sentences-

“Get to the back of the line,
buddy.”

“The Bears’ defensive line needs
a lot of help this year.”

“And that line drive is going
to be caught!”

“He has always bought into the
party line.” (Political party)

“Thank God they don’t have party
lines anymore.” (Several households sharing the same phone line.)

“The telephone lines are down.”

“I couldn’t draw a straight
line if you paid me.”

“The line of communication between
Jordan and Israel has been established.”

"Would you line up those glasses
for me?”

I’m sure you get the point-
the word line doesn’t take on any meaning until it is used in a sentence.
But- how can we make sense out of the sentence if we can’t make sense out
of the words until they are used in a sentence? In other words, which comes
first, the words or the sentence? Consider the following sentence-

The

sleek

black

bat

sailed

high

into

the

air

finally

landingat

the

feet

of

the

batter.

For some, the word bat
may have conjured up the image of the animal known as bat. The first time
I read the sentence, that is exactly what I saw in my mind’s eye. But at
some point, the image must change to that of a baseball bat in order for
the sentence to be meaningful. Now most sentences aren’t this potentially
confusing, but it does serve as a good example of what happens to one degree
or another every time we read a sentence. In other words, we “guess” at
the meaning of the words until we have read enough of the sentence to know
for sure whether our guesses are right or not. But as our guesses are either
confirmed or disconfirmed, the meaning of the sentence changes and we have
to modify our guesses yet again. That is, we have to constantly move back
and forth between the words and the sentence. And this happens, whether
we realize it or not, every time we read. (By stringing the words out down
and across the page, I made you slow down enough to notice what your thought
processes were.) We are always going back and forth in order to make the
words mean something so that the sentence means something. Or should we
say that we are always going back and forth in order to make the sentence
mean something so that the words mean something? This process can also
be described as going back and forth between the particulars or
parts (the words) and the whole (the sentence). And this going back
and forth between the particulars and the whole is what we do whenever
we try to understand anything, not just words and sentences. This then
is what Gadamer means by the hermeneutical circle. It is the back and forth
(dialectical) movement between the parts and the whole that leads to understanding.
Let’s take another example-

Hermeneutical Football

You are watching a football
game. If you only watch the quarterback, you only see one particular aspect
of the game. It may be an exciting aspect of the game, but it certainly
isn’t enough to understand how the game itself is going. You must pull
back and watch the play of the teams in order to get a sense of which way
the game is going. Yet if you only looked at the play of the game as a
whole, you wouldn’t understand the individual efforts made by the various
players. But then you wouldn’t appreciate the efforts of the individual
players if you couldn’t also see what they do within the context of the
whole game. That is, Herschel Walker’s ability to gain yardage wouldn’t
be any big deal if we couldn’t see that he was doing it against some pretty
big and mean defensive linemen. So, even when watching a football game,
we engage in the hermeneutical circle.

Looking at paintings is another
example of the hermeneutical circle. Although we can take in the entire
picture at once, our real understanding of the picture doesn’t begin until
we also look at the details and then back to the whole. Look at the painting,
The Education of the Virgin, which is also on the home, or
first, page of the HUM 210 site, for example.

(click on picture to see larger version)

Although physically it is possible
to look at the painting in one glance, to have any sense of what the picture
really means, you must look at various parts of it- the two women, the
book, the basket in the background, the play of light. But, in order for
these details to have meaning, you must pull back and look at the picture
as a whole once again. If you were to truly study the picture, you would
go back and forth many times before you felt you had a really good sense
of what the picture is all about. And yet, many people never bother to
look at the details of pictures because no one ever told them that it is
necessary to do so in order to really interpret the painting. (You will
have a chance to do a hermeneutical circle on
Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of Grande Jatte in
Unit Three.)

The method Heinrich Wolflin
used, for example, to develop his analysis of paintings (see Lecture
Note Two) was hermeneutics. And you can bet he used the hermeneutical
circle to determine how the details (parallel planes, vertical and horizontal
lines, shading, lighting, etc.) of a painting effect the overall impact
of the painting on viewers.

This is why hermeneutics is
useful to us. It teaches us first that we can engage in the hermeneutical
circle anytime that we have to interpret something, and second, it teaches
us how to engage in the circle; for, as Gadamer says,